I'm free! I'm free! I'm free!

I was on my knees in prayer last week crying out to God, as there was a wrestling going on in my soul. I wasn't even sure what I was wrestling about, but I could feel the tension. I could feel my flesh desperately wanting to hold on to something, while my spirit was persuading my soul to just let go and trust God. I am sure that many people reading this can relate to that feeling.There also happens to be a lot of important things coming up in the next few weeks. My wife and I have a lot of travel planned, both personal and business. I just don't want to be wrestling through whatever this thing is while travelling. I want to be both spiritually and emotionally prepared for the journey, so that I can function at the highest level when interacting with people. Hence, why I was on my knees crying out to God.I started asking God, "Lord, what do I need to do to get through this? What do I need to do to lay this thing aside, so that I can be freed up to love people the way that you want me to?" I heard the Lord's answer so clearly. He said to me, "Brian, I have set you free! You don't need to do anything to get free!" When I heard that, I immediately started thinking of scriptures:

• John 8: 36 - "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."
• John 8: 32 - "Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
• Romans 8: 1-2 - "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death."
• Hebrews 2: 14-15 - "Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death"

Friends, are you anything like me in that you find yourself trying to take things that have been given purely by grace and try to make them something to be earned? That is nothing but pure pride on our behalf. We did not earn our salvation. In fact, the bible is very clear that we could not possibly have earned it! Therefore, we certainly don't have the ability to earn the things that come as a result of that salvation, such as freedom.

Related Post: True freedom is freedom from ourselves

The truth is this: We are free! We are free! We are free! We don't have to do anything to earn it. It is a gift that we are freely given. And it is not something that we press towards. It is something that has already been given if we have submitted our lives to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The things in our life that we are not free from are simply the things that we believe we still need to earn freedom from. God is saying, "You are already free indeed! The blood that Jesus shed on the cross already took care of this!"Salvation is not something to be earned. It is something that was freely given. The same goes for freedom, so let's stop striving towards it. Let's just start receiving it and walking in it! Jesus died for it!