GET FREE/STAY FREE
Larry R Taylor
Jun 18, 2007

GET FREE/STAY FREE

 

Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

2Corinthians 3:17-18 

 

Jesus sets the captives free, free indeed. We are set free from every entanglement, barrier, hindrance stronghold, limitation and sin.  We are freed from every destructive force to a place of unhindered access and favor with the Father.  Liberty--transformed by a divine encounter.  It is a strange psychological phenomenon that takes place in the mind of an individual that fails to continue in that freedom that has been imparted by the Spirit of God.

 

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:

For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. James 1:22-25 

 

I have talked with many people who have had genuine, dramatic encounters with God that met immediate needs and produced tangible changes only to become distracted later and eventually drift away.  Inevitably, the conversations reveal that the memory of the encounter is so far removed from consciousness that for all practical purposes it is forgotten.  It is as if the encounter with God never happened at all.

 

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Galatians 5:1 

 

There is nowhere that this is more powerfully destructive than the area of the religious traditions of men.  The moment one surrenders the awareness of grace and freedom in the Spirit and the reality of His manifested prensence to replace it with the rules and regulations of man made religion there is a degeneration that immediately begins to take place. This choice eventually robs the individual of all sense of joy and victory.  Entanglement produces strife, which leads to anxiety and fear.  Faith is negated, replaced by ineffectual human efforts.  Paul is so radical as to state that one instance of submitting to the yoke of religious bondage (circumcision) will result in the same condition as if you went entirely back under the old system.

 

James exhorts the follower of Jesus to continue to gaze into the transforming "law of liberty" and not be distracted or entangled.  Paul put it this way, "...walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.. "...as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him..."

"Having begun in the Spirit will we be perfected in the flesh?"  Not just no, but emphatically no!  :)  To revert back to the systems of this world, the strength of the flesh and fear of men will only produce a Christian who is devoid of any vestige of the attributes that accompany the revealed Glory of the Lord.

 

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