The choices you make in freedom determine if you'll be free

After a lengthy conversation with one of my best friends, a true and authentic friend, I asked God to break my heart for what breaks His. Often times, we choose a path that is less than best for us as individuals for a variety of reasons. Today, I realized that the areas that we're most likely to "blow it," in terms of sinning against our Father, are places that we don't view sin as disgusting and freely choose to cross the line. God despises all sin and so should we.

Life is short. We hear this everywhere. Our society tells us that life is short or you only live once so live life to the fullest. What they're implying is that because life is short, we need to take advantage of the freedom to experience pleasures of many kind. This is one of the world's biggest lies. Life is, in fact, short, but don't short change your life.

We all have free will and the freedom to make choices. However, what gives you freedom is not the freedom to choose. It's the choices you make in freedom that determine if you'll be free. Just because you're free to make choices doesn't mean that you'll live a free life.

Some choices you make take your freedom. Maybe in your freedom you've made choices that have turned around and owned you. You may have the appearance of freedom and if you were to be measured and described by some geo-political definition you would be the most free person in the world, but you know more than anyone else how far your experience and existence is from being free.

A movie that paints a beautiful and haunting picture of where we could end up in our freedom is There Will Be Blood. It won several Academy Awards and is one of the saddest stories every told. It's sad because it's so close to reality.

Daniel Day Lewis plays a man who lives a life of greed and takes and takes and takes. The entire movie is about greed --taking what's not yours and stealing the trust of others. It clearly illustrates the corruption of the world which says it's all about my pleasure and my life and what I want and how it affects others doesn't matter. The movie starts and ends this way. It gives no glimpse of hope. It's a stark view of reality. Sometimes reality is scary.

As a Christ follower, God offers a glimpse of hope, but it's not in me. It's in Him. He promises that the "truth will set you free." Freedom doesn't make you free. Only God does. Jesus says in Matthew 16:24-26, "if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?"

Left to our own devices, in our freedom we will lose our lives. Life is short and it's a terrible idea to destroy it. It's not about the freedom to choose because you might actually choose to give up your freedom. It's about "dying to yourself" and in your freedom, choosing to let God lead you because the Truth will set you free.

Life is not just short, it's priceless and precious. Don't destroy it. In your freedom, choose to be free.