It is for freedom

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).

While preparing my sermon for this coming Sunday, I started humming a song to myself. At first, I didn’t notice my own activity. I was deep in thought about the freedom that we have in Christ. Getting ready to preach on the Sunday before July 4th, I wanted to talk about the true meaning of freedom. As Americans we either tend to take our freedom for granted or we totally misunderstand it.

Those who take it for granted forget that freedom isn’t free. It has a cost. For those who believe in Christ, our freedom from sin, death and the devil was a cost we couldn’t pay. But Jesus paid it on the cross. He purchased our freedom and offers it as a gift.

There are many who misunderstand this freedom and see it as a license to sin rather than liberty to live for God. But Christ doesn’t offer us this freedom so that we can sin all the more. He wants us to be free from our slavery to sin, so that we are free to be the image-bearers of God.

Anyway, this is what I was thinking when I noticed my humming. “What is that song?” I asked aloud, with no one in my breakfast nook but me. “Do you recognize it, Lord?” I thought, while continuing my humming.

Suddenly, the words started coming… “Thank God I am free, free, free from this world of sin…” I couldn’t remember the rest of the words yet, but I did have a memory of my mother singing the song.

When I was young, my mother would make my brother and I sit in the den while she got the other kids and herself ready for church. Every little bit, she would peep into the den to make sure we weren’t messing up our neatly combed hair and wrinkling our dress clothes wrestling with one another.

“Why don’t you watch something good on TV?” She would say while turning the channel to a local station that aired Southern Gospel. “Oh, I know them. Our quartet sang with them at a church up in [some place I’d never heard of]…”

If they were singing a song she knew (which was pretty much every gospel song there was), she would stand there in the den and sing along.

One of the groups that we used to see on a TV show called “Jubilee” was the “Dixie Echoes.” I looked them up on You Tube and guess which song I found?

Enjoy!