Freedom

By Jim Cole

The Bondsman

As a bail bondsman, I can free you from almost any jail for almost any crime you can commit. To remain free is up to you and it is a choice you have to make for yourself, no one can make that choice for you and it is a continual choice that you must make many times each and every day. Many people I have freed from jail have immediately gone right back to their criminal behavior and ended up right back in jail, thus, the freedom I provided them was only temporary. There is however a way for you to obtain PERMANENT freedom and it can ONLY be provided by ONE man, that man is Jesus Christ. Let me explain a little about the freedom he can give you, he can free you from the lusts and desires which are the causes of what gets you arrested and locked in a jail cell. If you have no desire to steal, you won’t steal, if you have no desire to sell drugs, you won’t, if you have no desire to hurt people, you won’t. It’s really quite simple. You can steal a car and call me and I can get you out of jail, but if you don’t deal with the REASON you stole the car, you will most likely just get out of jail and go steal another car. Jesus doesn’t just free you from your sin, he changes your nature and removes your desire to sin, John 8:34-35 says that EVERYONE who sins is a slave to sin and a SLAVE has no permanent place in the family but a SON belongs to it forever. What this means to me is that we may be slaves to sin when we do sin, but we are NOT part of the FAMILY of sin which is satan’s family. satan uses our PHYSICAL nature to manipulate our desires which very often lead us to sin and then he tries to bind us in his chains of sin and when he succeeds in this he makes people SLAVES to sin, but this IS NOT your FAMILY, Your family is the family of God, YOU are a child of God and therefore stand to inherit what God has ! You need to break the chains of your slavery of sin and come home to your family, God’s Family, Verse 36 says that if the Son sets you free, you WILL BE FREE INDEED. "The Son" Jesus Christ can and will set you free from the bondage of sin but you have to come home to him and ask him to free you, this is a DAILY and sometimes hourly or every second of every day surrender to HIS WILL. Our society is so full of sin that sometimes we can’t even get away from it. We live in physical bodies in a physical world and are born into this world with a sinful nature. Everywhere you look you see people doing what they want and society says "if it feels good, do it" I have actually had people tell me " I don’t know why my son is in jail, he didn’t kill anybody" see, this is what society is teaching us, do whatever you want to do or whatever your heart desires and it’s OK, that’s NOT what God says, God says "DON’T SIN" period. Being born of a physical nature makes it impossible to NEVER SIN and THE ONLY WAY to be set FREE from sin is by "The Son" Jesus. You do this by being BORN AGAIN. In order to be "Born Again" you must first die. You must die to your physical (sinful) nature, and your physical desires and lusts and put YOUR WILL to death. Then you ask Jesus to come into your heart and let HIS WILL take control of your life, and if you do this on a daily basis and TRY to do what God wants you to do and stop concentrating so much on what your physical desires are, you will find that it gets easier to stay in God’s WILL each day, and when you stay in God’s will, you have truly been SET FREE from the bondage of sin.

1John 5:14-15 This is the confidence we have in approaching God; that if we ask ANYTHING according to HIS WILL, he hears us, and if we know he hears us- whatever we ask, we know that we have what we asked of him.

(This does not mean that you can ask God for a big screen TV and he will give it to you, it means that when you ask for ANYTHING according to HIS WILL (not your will)

John 3: 5-7 I tell you the truth, no one can enter the Kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the spirit, Flesh gives birth to flesh but the Spirit gives birth to Spirit, you should not be surprised at my saying, you must be born again.

Matthew 6:33 But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and ALL these things will be given to you as well.

You may have reached a point in your life that you feel like you are out of control and can’t stop, but YOU CAN. NOT by your strength but through the strength that Christ gives you. If you wake up each day and bring God into your day at the very beginning of it and try to focus on what HE wants you to do, and then you TRY to do what HE wants you to do and start letting go of your own desires and lusts, you will see YOUR WILL starting to become HIS WILL and you will find yourself sinning less and less.

The more I focus on what God wants me to do, the less I focus on my own wants and desires that are NOT of God. I know that when you do something over and over again, it will become a habit, and habits are hard to break, when you do God’s will, over and over, This too becomes a habit, a good habit. Whatever sinful habits we have developed in our lives started out with us making a choice to do it for the first time, and then we did it over and over again until it became a habit, habits are hard to break but not impossible, the same way, you can CHOOSE to do something that you know God wants you to do, let’s say for example, you can FORGIVE someone for cutting you off and taking your parking space, or calling you a name, or stealing something from you, set that person free by forgiving them and not holding a grudge against that person, do this once, then twice, then three times and pretty soon you will be in the habit of forgiving people that have wronged you. This is something that Christ wants us to do. Maybe you see someone walking into WalMart and you notice that they left their keys in the car and the window down, rather than jumping in the car and taking it for a joy ride, or ignoring it and saying to yourself "man, I wouldn’t leave the keys in my car in this neighborhood" etc…, Yell to the person and say "HEY, you left your keys in the car and that’s not a good idea in this neighborhood!" this is HELPING someone, (another thing God wants us to do)….

You will undoubtedly find that the more you give of yourself and the more you help people, the more people will be willing to help you, and WE ALL NEED HELP from time to time.

Start reading your Bible EVERY DAY, even if it’s only for a few minutes, because when you start to read for a few minutes each day, you will start WANTING to read it more, you will develop a hunger for God’s Word and then for God’s Will.

God is our Father and HE is anxiously awaiting our return to him. When we get caught up in the sinful nature of this world and our fleshly desires, He is always waiting for us to come back to him. He will NEVER leave us. HE will NEVER forsake us. He LOVES us all more than we can possibly comprehend. He has his arms wide open ready to receive us if we just turn to him.

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a brief Prayer.

Lord Jesus I come to you as a sinner, I am unworthy of your Love, I am unworthy of your Salvation, I have lived a life not the way of your Will but the way of my own. I come to you now and ask you to forgive me of my sins and be Lord over my life. Come into my heart and fill me with your Holy Spirit. Lord I rebuke all the sins of my past and repent. I thank you Jesus for shedding your blood to wash away my sins. I thank you for taking my place on the Cross and paying the price for my sins. I thank you for your everlasting, eternal love and I know that You Rose again so that I can have eternal life with you. Father Guide me, Lead me, show me, love me, In Jesus’ Holy Name, Amen