Freedom And Glory

Read: Romans 8:16-25

Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. Romans 8:20-21

IN WORD

Freedom and glory. Few people know either, at least in any deep and meaningful way. Even for those who have political freedom and the glory of stardom, inner issues continue to enslave and degrade. Futility has been an inherent part of the human condition since the Fall. We crave both freedom and glory with every inch of our being, but both are frustratingly elusive.

Life in the Kingdom is an answer to the futility of the ages, an escape from what we thought was the human condition. That frustrating finiteness, those limitations we accepted as “normal,” those flaws we embraced as “only human”—all are temporary exceptions to our created design. We were made for so much more.

We won’t find much of that promise in common religious teaching. Most religious principles don’t liberate us; they confine and enslave us. Most practices and disciplines do more to highlight our futility than they do to empower us for glory. The only way we experience either freedom or glory is by being so thoroughly filled with and saturated with the Spirit of the King that we step into an entirely new state of being. It’s a new dimension of living. And it’s no longer frustrating and futile.

IN DEED

If you aren’t experiencing the state of freedom and glory that is part of your inheritance, ask God for it. Look past religious assumptions and preconceived ideas of what it ought to look like. Go ahead and step into what creation is waiting for. You don’t have to wait like the rest of the world does.

That doesn’t mean you won’t have trials or pain, or that life will immediately become full of joy and absent of sorrow. It does mean, however, that you won’t be enslaved by the fallen nature, limited to visible and material dimensions, or shaped by finite restrictions. And you’ll know the kind of life the rest of the world is longing for.

ADDITIONAL READING: 2 Corinthians 3:17-18

My chains fell off, my heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

CHARLES WESLEY