Thankful

I was reading in John this morning, especially John 8:32-35. The parts that especially stood out were " And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free...whoever commits sin is a slave of sin...therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed."


I was really hit with the truth that God loves me enough to poke at the sore places in my life. You know, the ones that when He hits, you rear up spitting mad, lashing at Him in anger and ready to kill the first thing that crosses you. The places that you yourself won't even go to deal with, because you'd rather fester in the dark than be dealt with in the light. God is willing to go there because He wants to make us free. Free from the chains we tightly wrap ourselves in because we're afraid to let them go. We're afraid to have nothing to hold onto, we don't want to take those faltering steps, we don't want to have the ability to fall. We'd rather stay tied up, we'd rather stay confined and controlled. Because a life not lived on our own terms, and love on any terms other than our own, scares us.

We say we want freedom, and what we mean by freedom is the ability to do things our way. We mean we want our wills to be autonomous, not answering to anyone, and especially not to God. And what we don't get is that that is not freedom. We're slaves to ourselves. Left to obey our whims and wants, our unhealthy desires that will destroy us. We think we control ourselves, and we don't realize that our desire for control is what's controlling us. It's making us do things we don't want to do, say things we don't mean/want to say, feel obligation and guilt that we don't want to feel.


And God, thank goodness He loves us more than we could ever love ourselves. His love is unwilling to let us settle. His love is not content to let us squirm in our chains, happy to stay in our own filth because it's the only way we've ever known. His love is ok with prodding us in the sore places and being the object we direct our rage and indignant anger towards.

Why? Because God does not care about making us happy. God doesn't care about making us comfortable. And He sure as heck doesn't care about us preferring our chains to His Redemption.


He wants us free. And today, I'm so thankful for that. I'm so thankful His love sees more clearly than my blind perception of what should be done. I'm so thankful He wounds me because He loves me. I'm so thankful to serve a God who wants me free.