Freedom For Today

“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.”

These verses can be used to either strengthen our faith or tear it apart. I’ve seen it happen both ways. On the surface, these verses portray a supernatural freedom in which God is directly involved in your life and taking care of you. “Don’t worry about it, I got it!” Imagine someone serving you or helping you with a task. Think of a friendship you’ve had in which your friend helped you and made you feel a little lighter. That’s a beautiful picture of these verses and a description of peace.

The other way of reading (or misusing) these verses is to direct them at someone else who is anxious. “The Bible says don’t worry — that’s a command!” I wish it were not the case, but well-meaning Christians have hurt people by using these verses to swat away hard emotions and make everything all better. This concept is called spiritual bypass, and we do it when we use Scripture to bypass or skip over what’s going on for us inside. “God loves you and wants to take care of you” is really different than “stop being anxious because God told you not to.” Which one seems more helpful to you?

God really cares. Genuinely. He is ready and able to help you. He is a bringer of peace. Not in the sense that he wants to shame you for worrying. In fact, you might just be anxious or worried sometimes. Some people have clinical levels of anxiety, and if that’s you then peace may be more like a place you can go inside of God than a feeling you can arrive at in yourself. The message here is clear — the weight of the world is not on your shoulders. When you pray, you have someone who is listening. He’s guarding you so that you can experience the freedom of his kingdom. We can cling to that truth whether we feel it or not.

“Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stay true to the Lord. I love you and long to see you, dear friends, for you are my joy and the crown I receive for my work. Now I appeal to Euodia and Syntyche. Please, because you belong to the Lord, settle your disagreement. And I ask you, my true partner, to help these two women, for they worked hard with me in telling others the Good News. They worked along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are written in the Book of Life. Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice! Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do. Remember, the Lord is coming soon.”

Growing up in church whenever the word “therefore” was used in the Bible, my Sunday school teachers would say that we always ask, “What’s it there for?” That word reminds us to go back to where we left off so we know what Paul means. In this case, “therefore” means, “because we find our belonging and citizenship in heaven…” we stay true to the Lord. We hang on to the mission because we know there is something bigger. There is something more.

Paul next appeals to two women who have had a dispute. I don’t know about you but I sure wouldn’t want to be called out in the Bible for holding a grudge. Notice the way Paul reminds these women and the congregation who they are. He recalls their work to help spread the news of Jesus. He reminds them that they are saved and in the spectrum of eternity an earthly dispute is small enough to settle. He calls them (and us) to a higher level of freedom, joy, and hope.

Paul describes the freedom the Christian life offers, both for eternity and for right now. We are waiting for Jesus to return and we have hope that he will not abandon us. The world will not decay forever. The kingdom of God will restore all that is broken. It is because of this future hope that we can rejoice. It is a deliberate choice to look past our surroundings and our circumstances and cling to what will be. In the midst of that, we don’t just sit around and wait. We work to make the world better. Settle a dispute, bring peace, share the good news of Jesus, be a bringer of the kingdom of heaven. Not a bad to-do list, really. (P.S. – It’s the way to freedom.)

“Dear brothers and sisters, pattern your lives after mine, and learn from those who follow our example. For I have told you often before, and I say it again with tears in my eyes, that there are many whose conduct shows they are really enemies of the cross of Christ. They are headed for destruction. Their god is their appetite, they brag about shameful things, and they think only about this life here on earth. But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control.”

What are the patterns in your life? Would you say you are headed for destruction? Sadly I have known many people who claim to be Christians but live by their own rules. They fill every craving, focus on getting ahead, and go through one relationship after another. The more you feed your flesh the more your spirit will be destroyed. That gets you farther and farther away from Jesus.

What does it mean for you to be a citizen of heaven? What are the laws there? Sometimes people think of God as just an eternal being with a bunch of strict rules. We know from what Paul said already about circumcision that rules are absolutely not the point. God’s design for you is something far greater than this world can offer you. He’s preparing a place for you and has a brand new, glorious body ready to go.

You belong. When you accept Jesus as your Savior, you gain citizenship in an eternal kingdom. You have a home. You have a body. You are part of something bigger than just you. If you can grasp onto this sense of belonging in God’s kingdom, you will live differently. Not because God demands a bunch of rule following, but because you know what freedom is. Supernatural belonging gives you a reason not to try to belong in this world. Where are you looking to belong?

“I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead! I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us. Let all who are spiritually mature agree on these things. If you disagree on some point, I believe God will make it plain to you. But we must hold on to the progress we have already made.”

Do you want to know Jesus? Do you want to experience his death-defying power? Paul has some tough first steps for us in the process: (1) suffer, (2) die. Perfection comes when we embrace suffering and death as Jesus did. It’s counter-intuitive to embrace something in order to overcome it, but that’s how it works. The power is in our victory through suffering and death, not around it or over it or by way of a back door.

Paul was driven by mission. When suffering got hard, he looked to a prize of eternal significance. He already saw the fruits of his labor as the early church was spreading. The name of Jesus was becoming known around the world. How could he give up at that point? Even when things got hard and he was thrown in prison (where he was writing this letter), the ground the Gospel had gained was too much to lose.

Have you suffered for some part of God’s mission to spread the love of Jesus to the world? What have you given up in your life? What has made you uncomfortable? What suffering have you endured for the sake of eternal glory? American Christians sometimes adopt a false martyrdom when people find them offensive or don’t celebrate their holidays. That’s not suffering for the Gospel. Altering your life in some way, taking the hard road when easy would be, well, easy. That’s suffering. Risking your friends, your family, your job, your home for the sake of helping others find Jesus. It’s a challenge to me and I hope to you as well. It’s in those kinds of hard choices that we find maturity and freedom.

“I was circumcised when I was eight days old. I am a pure-blooded citizen of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin—a real Hebrew if there ever was one! I was a member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law. I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church. And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault. I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. “

What does it mean to be a Christian? You might get a wide range of answers depending on who you ask. Perhaps even more difficult, what does it mean to be connected to God? For Paul, connection with God was understood as strict obedience. He did everything right according to the Jewish Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament that were consider God’s law). He was so devout that he killed early Christians because Jesus was seen as a threat to the Jewish law.

Paul had a change of heart. (You can read more about it in Acts 9). He was righteous before, and Jesus had befriend a whole bunch of sinners. Jesus challenged religious leaders who were so strict about the law that they didn’t truly understand it. Ultimately, if you are all about following strict rules, then you are all about yourself. Your own effort matters and that’s it. (And you have a great excuse for judging everybody else who isn’t keeping up…)

God gave the Jewish people his perfect standards as a way to show them they couldn’t make it to him on their own. They needed a rescuer, which the Old Testament describes as the “Messiah.” This savior was going to make everything right. Some people like Paul (when he was named Saul) believed that following the law was the way to salvation. Jesus came along and said, “I am the way.” Now we have a choice: try to save ourselves or believe that Jesus is the way to God. When we have faith, it’s not about trying to be perfect in order to get God’s approval. It’s about sitting with my own brokenness. If I cry out for a savior in faith that Jesus is willing to save me, then that’s all the “righteousness” I can muster. Beyond that, I’m simply just desperate.