Freedom!!!

“The more we own the more it owns us.” We strive everyday to be truly free. Free of debt or free of our unhealthy habits but what does freedom truly look like. Each day we are inundated with new things we “NEED.” A house, new pots and pans, a night out on the town. I need the new book, computer, purse. None of these things are inherently bad unless we give them more than what they deserve. The new “thing” will never make me happy. So why do I expect it to again and again. I keep believing the lie which says the more of a consumer I am the HAPPIER I will be. It is one of the many lies which has power over me. Another is Skinny=Happy, or what I do everyday as a mother to Madi (18months) is not very important. I am enslaved to these lies and they influence me almost daily. I know they are lies but I continue to believe them. The truth is the lie will continue to have power as long as I keep telling it to myself. I am enslaved to the things which should serve me.
When I think about it I lie to myself about a lot of stuff. If the truth is hard or uncomfortable I lie. If the truth is painful I lie, and I know I am not alone. For example.
Lie… I am overweight because I had a baby, and I have a slow metabolism, and I am a heavy person to begin with, and I am weight loss resistant, and I have a handicapped foot.
Truth… I am overweight because I ate too much and didn’t exercise!!! I actually do have a handicapped foot but it didn’t make me fat.
My enslavement is voluntary I choose to believe all the lies. As Christians we have died with Jesus on the cross. Like Paul says in Romans 6
5If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
8Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
11In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

These verses set us free from our enslavement. Christ has won victory over sin and death so we are free. But how do we as freed people respond to this new freedom? We choose to live it as Christ lived. To give our whole selves to work of God. In Christ we are made ALIVE. This is REAL freedom, sin is death but in Christ there is LIFE.