The Death of Me!
When does freedom begin? Does it begin when I have plenty of money? Am I free because I have plenty of time? Am I free because I get to travel the world? Do I find freedom simply because I live in a free country? Will I be free if I get to live out all of my dreams and desires?
What makes me free and what makes me a slave, and who is my slave master?
You see, many of the things we are taught to pursue in life don’t actually free us, but increase our bondage and reduce our liberty. Having more money might improve your financial freedom, but enslave you to the fear of loss. Having too much time can easily enslave you to idleness. Living in a “free country” like the United States subjects one to countless laws and regulations. You can’t do this and that to your house unless you get permission from the city. Sometimes, the more civilized and “free” a society is, the more rigid are its rules. Traveling all the time will soon enslave you to boredom. None of these things bring true freedom, but with them some other form of bondage.
And what is the worst bondage of all? Living for my own desires, to accomplish my own will in life. Desire, while not necessarily bad, can easily become a chain of bondage. The greatest bondage one can find himself under is the bondage of his own desire, and the greatest slave master is the self.
A Clash of Gods
God made us and gave us all we have, and He asks for us to put Him first. But we have a choice: choose Him or something inferior to Him. An angel, the self, a spouse, an ideal, a nation, some material aim. The question we all face is: who do we believe has our highest good in mind, and who will bring us the greatest joy and freedom?
The answer to this question determines who we worship.
The truth is, on the surface, most people will say, “I choose God.” But the reality is the first person we worship is “Me.”
We are our own “I am.” We are our own gods. We serve the self, and the self has led us into bondage.
The problem with the self is that it is limited, short-sighted, and doesn’t really know what will truly please it. Why, you ask? Because we didn’t make ourselves and don’t truly know the real aim of life.
The self is the product of environment, experience, etc., and it is corrupt, as we all are. The self was born empty, and it fills itself with the things society dictates and holds us hostage to these standards, expectations, etc.
Living for self and following the dictates of self is the worst bondage anyone can find themselves in. It not only isolates you from others, but it isolates you from God Himself. The self becomes a rival to God. It seeks to exalt itself above Him. It says, "My will be done." And yet the self is only following the will of nature, society, and behind that, the devil. To follow nature is to become degraded to the level of nature, for nature was created below mankind. For a man to follow his natural instinct is to sink lower. To follow society’s dictates above God is to live and define life according to the opinions of others. And to follow the dictates of Satan is to follow a path of self-destruction. To follow self and live for self is to assign to oneself three cruel tyrants: nature, society, and Satan. You can never be free; you will never reach true joy in that condition, but will continue to degrade more and more. Self-rule is the puppet Satan promotes in order to rule from the shadows.
To be truly free, I must come to an end. To be truly free, I must die to self and live unto God.
When I begin to die to self, I begin to die from the weight of my own expectations and the expectations of others, and I begin to live for Christ, who created me and knows the things that will truly bring me joy. Christ rescues us from the bondage of servitude to created things and lifts us up to fellowship with the Infinite.
Your perspective begins to shift, and you begin to see things for what they truly are.
Physical things cannot satisfy a spiritual being, and man was made a spiritual being. Sex, money, travels cannot satisfy a being who was made to fellowship with God and angels. Multiple PhDs cannot fulfill a mind that was made to contemplate eternal things. Dying things cannot fulfill someone who was made to live eternally.
The self, as the most effective agent of Satan to enslave the soul, blinds us to these realities and makes us believe that God is the true enemy of our happiness and that we, by our own wisdom, can bring joy to ourselves. It is a cruel lie that has destroyed many lives.
Analyze your life closely, and you will see that the one who has brought you the greatest sorrow is yourself and your own refusal to rise higher by submitting to God and to walk in fellowship with Him.
If we want to begin to enjoy life and begin to have true freedom, we must break free from every slave master that hinders us, and the most powerful one is the self. Not even Satan and his host can hold a determined freedom seeker in bondage. The only one who can is the self. Let our cry then be, liberty or death. Let self die so that I may live again. Let self die so I may be free.
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