Free To Serve

by John Fischer
Purpose Driven Life Daily Devotional

“For you have been called to live in freedom – not freedom to satisfy your sinful nature, but freedom to serve one another in love.” (Galatians 5:13)

What will you use your freedom for?It’s an important question, since one of the greatest things about being born again is the freedom that comes from the Spirit of God. “And wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, he gives freedom.” (2 Corinthians 3:17)

In Christ we have been set free from the power and the penalty of sin, free from trying to earn God’s favor, free from the insatiable need to please ourselves, and free to know the truth.Even though we may not be aware of all these freedoms, they are nonetheless true and available to each of us by faith.

But the question Paul addressed in Galatians is what we use this freedom for. He suggests that we use this freedom to lovingly serve each other.

Notice the things we have been set free from, they all revolve around the self. Think about it.Most of us have spent the better part of our lives getting all the attention. Even the guilt, self-pity, and regret we love to wallow in are all about us. Imagine freeing up the thinking time we put into self-indulgence – feeling guilty, judging others to feel better by comparison, and figuring out how to please our selfish desires – and imagine spending that time on someone else.

First you will need to remind yourself of your freedom in Christ because forgetting that is what gets us stuck in the first place.Then use that freed-up time to identify with what someone else is going through and plan how you can serve him or her.

If being free to serve sounds like an oxymoron, it’s only because we have all become so used to being in bondage we can’t imagine being free.But free to serve is what we were meant to be.It’s how we become useful to God.

Next time you catch yourself absorbed in you-know-who, stop and think about what you can do for someone around you.Remember your freedom in Christ and spend it on others.Think about what their needs might be – ask them, if you don’t know – and serve them in love. It’s time for someone else to get our attention for a change.

It’s All About Jesus

by John Fischer
Purpose Driven Life Daily Devotional

“When I came to you … I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:1-2 NIV)

The Gospel message has gotten a little foggy these days with all the attention being paid to politics, family values, and culture wars, and a lot of folks have lost track of the fact that it’s all about Jesus. Ask the man on the street what a Christian is today and you’re likely to ask a long time until you hear anything about Jesus or the cross. Our message, from beginning to end, is Jesus – who he was, what he said, and what he did.

The last recognized revival in this country was a movement primarily among baby boom youth in the early 1970s that was quickly dubbed the Jesus movement. It got that name because everything was focused around Jesus. When you think about it, Jesus was the ultimate hippie – he wore long hair, sandals, and he was against the establishment – and a generation of ideological kids embraced Christ, even while they rejected religion and the institutional church. Jesus was the central figure in all of this. What is now called Christian music was originally called Jesus music. Christians were called Jesus freaks. Now I’m not suggesting we all go back to tie-dyed T-shirts, bell-bottom pants, and Jesus rock, but I am suggesting we could learn something from this emphasis that transcended politics and religion.

Our message is all about a person, and our mission is to share that person with the world. God made us to belong to him; we wandered away; Jesus is the way back. A whole generation of young people found that out 30 years ago and nothing’s really changed about the heart of the message. It’s a personal message. It’s non-threatening. It’s all about a meaningful relationship with God that comes to someone by way of a meaningful relationship with them. There’s not a lot of baggage here. Our main concern is to introduce ourselves to people and in doing so, to introduce them to Jesus, because, as far as we’re concerned, that’s who it’s all about.

Jesus came to save us, unite us, and teach us to love one another. We’ve added a lot of other stuff to this and I’m not so sure it’s helping us do what we’re supposed to be doing. If it makes you more loving to your neighbor, then it’s probably a good thing. If it makes you your neighbor’s enemy, then it’s probably not. If it’s all about Jesus, then it’s definitely “right on!”