We boast of freedom in a life of limits. As humans we live in the ever present bondage of boundaries. Nothing in our lives is unlimited. We can only climb so high, reach so far, run so fast, think so long, enjoy so much, or live so many years.
We, people, are perishable products with an expiration date that limits the duration of our physical existence. The end is coming, but we don’t know when. In the mean time we are all held in bondage by life’s limits. So how do we deal with being held hostage in life? Here are three ways:
* Judgment: Judgment is not just accusing words said about others or about ourselves, but the daily price we pay for the way we live. It is cause and effect. Human thoughts, behaviors, and attitudes create consequences and a great many of those consequences are harmful, destructive, and/or devastating. The things that we think, say, and/or do, judge us every day.
* Tolerance: Tolerance is passively accepting the bondage in our lives and/or in the lives of others. It is fatalism represented by these words: That’s just the way I am, or, I was born this way. Tolerance is surrender to our limits and the acceptance of their judgmental consequences. Then tolerance embraces denial and/or blame in an effort to dull and/or disguise the pain of life’s daily judgments. (We can’t get free, so we pretend and proclaim that we are, by verbally justifying ourselves and blaming others.)
* Salvation: Salvation is being rescued from our bondage — being set free, not in words only, but in deed and in truth. It is not the proclamation of pie-in-the-sky religious platitudes, but the practical opening of pain-producing prison doors. But who can say: Here I am to save the day? Who can bring us real freedom?
In the late 1880s, three men were discussing their efforts to bring freedom to people caught up in addictive attitudes and behaviors in East London and other parts of England. They were working on a flyer to promote a meeting and had written: “We are a volunteer army.”
Bramwell Booth said: “I’m not a volunteer, I’m a regular or nothing at all.” His father, William Booth, took a pen and crossed out the word “volunteer” replacing it with the word “salvation.” It then read: “We are a salvation army.”
In the next few decades a movement known as The Salvation Army spread around the world like raging fire, boldly proclaiming salvation through the mighty power and presence of Jesus Christ in this world.
Nowadays about the only time you hear the word “salvation” is when the news media talk about the social work of The Salvation Army. Perhaps it is time for our culture to rediscover this mostly forgotten concept of “salvation.”
Are you passively accepting the guilt, judgment, and consequences of your life choices? Or are you attempting to justify yourself and others through the tolerance of denial and blame?
There is a third option that many millions of human beings through out the past 2,000 years have discovered. We who have been held hostage by life’s bondage can begin to live and walk daily in the amazing salvation offered to us by the living, resurrected Jesus Christ.
If you would like to meet a dynamic group of people who are seeking to live daily in Christ’s powerful salvation, visit: The Salvation Army Berry Street Worship Center, 225 Berry St., Nashville, TN, 37207 — Sundays at 10:45am & Thursdays at 6:30pm.
