When it’s Time to “Take Your Freedom”.

It’s like a wave of grief swells involuntarily in me as my nine-year-old clings to the book we are reading…

Addy, an American Girl, was something I wouldn’t let my brown skinned daughter read on her own.

It’s about a young child entrenched in a war for her freedom; beaten, made to eat worms. Her father and brother taken, sold to another plantation.

And I don’t want it to be real, this kind of slavery.

I don’t want to have to be telling my child that African American children were forced to work from sun up to sun down, simply because their skin tone was different…

But the hard road, the road to hope and healing, the windy road that always leads to freedom, rarely, if ever excludes suffering.

We open scripture together this same morning.

Day three, homeschooling.

I find another battle revving up in Romans, between the flesh and the spirit.

It is the fourth time in a row, I have opened randomly my Bible, coming to this very same passage.

Clearly, God is trying to tell me something.

And there in a type of comparing contrast style, the Amplified makes clear the often grey and ambiguous lines between flesh-living, and what it means to walk fully in His Spirit.

Flesh living:

• Relies on sense and reason
• Leads to sinning
• Includes carnal thoughts and purposes
• Is hostile to God, doesn’t submit to Him
• Caters to appetites and impulses
• Cannot please God

Worse yet, flesh-living leads to death.  And I wonder if we realize that when we boast saying we have the right, “to live life as we want”, it is impossible to simultaneously be pleasing to God.

Nothing good comes from flesh-living.

The other option, Spirit-filled living:

• Gives deep soul peace (both now and forever)
• Leads to life
• Means He is fully in control, not us.
• Is marked by Him directing, us following
• Is a life that is alive, living both now and forever
• Restores life to our mortal bodies
• Requires us putting to death evil deeds prompted by the body
• Means we are living, His Spirit testifying to our spirit
• We are walking in the Spirit of Adoption

And yet, too many of us live in the flesh. We act like slaves, like orphans without purpose, when Galations tells us we are heirs, daughters, sons.  We have been redeemed, ransomed, been given life and complete freedom.

The thing I love about homeschooling isn’t the work, the long hours, the sacrifices or time spent checking off school work.

What I love about homeschooling is that we can center our day around Jesus and root all of our learning in God’s word.

We can talk about stories like Addy, discussing not only the message of what was taught, but the heart of God and His underlines message in all of our learning.

I ask my nine-year-old if she has ever read anything about slavery while she was in public school.

“Yes”, she responds. But I know her understanding was taught one dimensional.

My tear struck eyes look at her long thin, dark frame curled up in my lap. She turns back at me.

Both of us broken at the thought of slavery, and hate, and the flesh living that led to the bondage of far too many not that far back in history.

Our eyes both cloud with tears.  We can barely see each other.  On the outside, anyway.

But it is as if the tears are the cleaning medicine all of us need, to overcome segregation and lies.

I explain, slavery is not just something that happens to our bodies.

Slavery can be in our minds and our hearts. Some of the most bound people I have ever found, walk upright, look great on the outside….

But real freedom is the kind that loves unconditionally, even those in our lives who don’t deserve it. It is forgiving, and truly walking in our right as believers; the right to listen to His Spirit, walking confidently, knowing “whose” we belong to.

• Hate is bondage.
• Living by the flesh is bondage.
• Unforgiveness is bondage.
• Trying to control is bondage.
• Pride (thinking we are better than someone) is bondage.

But freedom is much more rare:

• Unconditional Love is freedom.
• Knowing whose we are is freedom.
• Walking in His Spirit is freedom.
• Losing control to Jesus, is freedom.
• Forgiveness is freedom.
• Trusting Jesus regardless of our circumstances is freedom.

And I think she gets it, this Biblical message that sin is death, and living to the flesh is slavery of the heart.

We keep reading.  Addy escapes with her mom in the dark of night, they run, “Take their freedom” as she calls it.

And I wonder…

• Why we wait for freedom to fall into our laps.
• Why do we sit and wait, when God has given us the power that raised Christ from the dead.
• Why do we sit and wallow in our sin, blaming, making excuses, or attempting to justify why we are living in the flesh…

When true believers know Jesus died to give us the power to, “Take our freedom”.

My daughter and I rejoice as Addy and her mama make it to the safe house.  No more Confederate Soldiers, no more plantation owners, no more field lords cracking the whip over them.

And I read, “The Holy Spirit comes to our aid and bears us up in our weakness”. (Romans 8:26).

Still, too many would rather wallow in complacency or live entrenched in fleshly ways, that lean on His Spirit…someone they can’t see.

We close the book of Addy.

We give one last cheer for freedom, while I make sure the lines of hate are not divided between race or people.

We discuss how hate is no respecter of persons and is not always seen…but is a heart condition.

I explain how racism or any kind of putting down of any kind of people is always sin, always poisonous, rooted from pride in our hearts. 

Real strength is found in loving, like Addy and her mom did. Not always trusting, but still loving their captures despite their sufferings.

It’s about moving forward, and fighting for what is ours. Not justifying living like the majority.

And oh friend, today I am convicted. I don’t want to live like most people.

I don’t want to wait in captivity while wars threaten, Christians are imprisoned, martyrs are being hard pressed and condemned in a holocaust that might challenge us to question…

Is freedom really worth fighting for?

I want to run towards what God has for us.

I want to disciple my children with love, bend the world towards Jesus, not just sit back and watch as the weight of evil comes crashing closer to us…us standing back and watching.

Won’t you join me in living not as orphans, but adopted children who “war with love” without question, all people?

Won’t you stand strong on what Romans tells us when asked, “What then shall we say to all this?”

“If God is for us, who can be against us? (Galations 8:31)

We were made for freedom. Nothing less.

Isn’t it time we stand up, and fight by living by His Spirit in love?