Slave has such a negative connotation and it should. When we think of slave we think of all the injustices of the world where one group of people took away the rights of another. I remember once after playing a concert with my band a woman came up to me and asked if we were Christian. We were a 2 piece Heavy Metal band and we wore suits, sounded like a good idea at the time. Anyway my drummer confessed that he didn’t believe and before I was so struck by the question that before I could answer the woman declared that, “God just makes you a slave”, or words to that effect and stomped off. I have been a Christian for most of my life. For a few years I faded away but I never felt like a slave following God. Are there things that God does not want me to do? Yes, he doesn’t want me to abuse drugs because he wants me to fill my life with something meaningful and he loves me so he doesn’t want to see me physically deteriorate. He wants me in the here and now rather than hiding in a chemical illusion. Yes, he wants me to wait until I am married to have sex. He doesn’t want me catching diseases and he wants me to save that most intimate special movement for the highest love between two people who are ready to bring new life into this world in a relationship the is commented with no end. Yes, he wants me to love him with all my mind, body and soul. Its not because God is an egomaniac, its because created me out of love and wishes to have it reciprocated. Yes, God wants me to stop thinking about myself and help my fellow man. He wants me to feed the hungry, cloth the naked and tend to the sick. Does doing all these things make me feel like a slave? No, I don’t feel like a slave, rather than eat as much as I want and get drunk all the time and try to have sex with every woman I see and take drugs that put me in a state of false euphoria I focus on the “we” not the “me”. Doing all those things makes me feel like a selfish jerk. It makes me feel like I only care about myself and feeding my ego. God calls me to give up my life. To give up looking inward and to take up my cross. He asks me to look outward like Jesus. He asks me to help others to no end. All the rules that make me a slave as some say are this. 1. Love God (God, Jesus, Holy Spirit) with mind, body and soul. 2. Love others as myself. Thats what it all boils down to. So each day, even the trying ones, I suit up with my cross and head out. Am I perfect, no, but God still loves me. When I make mistakes I ask for forgiveness and trod on. Free of the chains of pain, addiction, ego and sin. Because as I see it sin is where the slavery is cause enough is never enough and you keep trying to get more chained to a cycle slavery feeding my ego.
Matthew 16:24-27
24Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life? 27For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done.
No comments:
Post a Comment